Got Soul?

by Pa Rock
Barstool Philosopher

Sunday's foray into the metaphysical left me thinking about the concept of the soul. When I sit and ponder, I wonder:

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that humans have souls. If that is true, does it necessarily follow that all humans have souls? People also have arms and legs, for the most part, but some do not. Not all humans possess the sense of sight, but most do. If the soul exists, is it necessary equipment, like a brain, or can a person function without one? Are we born with souls or do they develop as we mature?

Years ago a young man and I were talking about human life being created in laboratories, something that was well within the realm of possibility even then. He grudgingly admitted that scientists might be able to manufacture sperm and an egg, and thus produce life through chemistry, but he was adamant that such a laboratory creation would be born without a soul. So sex is necessary for the creation of a soul?

How would one know if an acquaintance had a soul or not? What would a soulless individual look like? Would he resemble a movie zombie, stumbling through a decaying cityscape and ripping the heads off of innocent bystanders? Or would he be a suave and charming sociopath like Ted Bundy, equally capable of flattery or butchery?

Is it possible for a soul to detach itself from the individual before death? Could a creature with a soul be a serial killer like Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer? Could a creature with a soul avoid service in a war (Bush, Cheney, Rummy, or Wolfowitz) and then cavalierly send the children of others, less privileged than themselves, off to the sands of slaughter? Could a person with a soul harbor that much evil?

Can a soul be consigned to Heaven or Hell for eternity by some overgrown hall monitor with a pulpit? What is Heaven? What is Hell?

Does conscience trump soul, or complement it? Or are they the same?

Is living well the best revenge?

How Hot Is It?

by Pa Rock
Weatherman

It's hot in Arizona, so damned hot that the asphalt radiates its scorching heat through shoes, and socks, and flesh. It's so hot that the little birds totally ignore me when I scatter tater tots for them at lunch. Just a few short weeks ago they were coming in so close that I feared for the safety of my lunch - and now they're gone, hiding in some dark hot place waiting on the sun to go down. And when the evening finally does arrive, those tater tots will be burned beyond edibility.

Arizona heat is unrelenting, and it's a bitch. The past three days have been over one hundred degrees each, and it's only early May. There are no clouds to give hope for rain, only the occasional hot breeze made brown with the worthless dust of the desert. Everything hides under rocks, or beneath buildings, or in air-conditioned cubicles until the sun sets and the temperature eases down into the 90's. If there is any living to be done in this hellhole, it will be in the evening, or late at night, in dark places.

An appropriate summer greeting in this part of Arizona is "Go to Hell!" While Hades might not be the ideal vacation spot, it has to be cooler than Phoenix!

Atypical Saturday

by Pa Rock

This is the first Saturday since February that I haven't been chained to the computer typing Rootbound columns into a blog. To celebrate, I went to the office and spent three-and-a-half hours catching up on the paperwork that piled up while I was in Texas. I didn't get completely caught up, but the backlog is now manageable.

After that I went to the gym. I expect to die at the gym someday...but that's okay. It will be the radical changes in temperature that do me in. I go into the gym from the oven called Arizona, walk on a treadmill in air-conditioned comfort, and occasionally use a couple of the weight machines - all of which begin to warm me up again. Then I go to the locker room (where it is cool) and change into my swim trunks and got sit in the very hot spa for twenty minutes. Then it's back to the cool locker room, the cool gym, out the front door, and back into Hell! (If I do die at the gym, I hope that it is in the large, bubbly spa! It is Nirvana!)

The spa today was fun. There are two actually, and each can accommodate fifteen or twenty people. The one that I was in this afternoon was fairly full, and at one end of the communal bath a young couple appeared to be very busy trying to breed. I suspect the reason that they weren't successful in their endeavor was that the warm churning water took the jack out of his hammer. Several other individuals in the spa looked as though they would be ready to jump in and help if need be, but the invitation never came. Instead the young man and his lady left and went to the lap pool which has cooler, non-turbulent water. I wonder if the water stayed that way?

Hell

by Pa Rock

I have always contended that my definition of Hell would be a Disney cruise, a long ocean voyage on a big red ship with hordes of crumb-snatchers swarming across every deck like so many crazed and starving locusts. A recent article on the Internet, however, has led me to a clearer understanding of just how truly awful Hell could be.

It happened this week when a large group of adolescent girls who were attending cheerleading camp at the University of Texas decided to see how many of their group could squeeze into an elevator. Twenty-six of them managed to get inside and then ride the elevator down three floors without mishap - until they tried to exit their big sardine can. It was then that they discovered the doors wouldn’t open. Fortunately, each was equipped with a minimum of one cell phone, so they were able to call for help - and then, most likely, spent the rest of their ordeal texting each other about their tragic situation. (OMG!) The vacuous teens were pasted to each other for twenty-five minutes until a repairman managed to pry the doors open.

If I expire in the pursuit of sin, may I wake up screaming on a cruise ship crammed with out-of-control children rather than in an intellectual vacuum of compressed cheerleaders. There is Hell, and then there is Hell!

Heaven and Hell

by Pa Rock
Philosopher

Do you ever wonder about what happens when we die? Aside from a handful of psychics and spoonbenders, and those who are religious to a fault, the rest of us may occasionally ponder that outcome. There is a lot of support for the concept of an immortality, whether that involves sitting on a cloud and strumming a harp, or roaming the Earth in some nebulous dimension and haunting the family estate or those troublesome descendants forever and ever.

Heaven and Hell may be very real places that grab our spirits and hold on tight as we pass on. Heaven and Hell might also be very real places that are in this plane of existence and not the next.

Stay with me here.

Suppose we each make our own Heaven and Hell, right here, right now. Those who do good works and genuinely show love for their fellow Man are safely anchored in a Heaven that they have created. On the other hand, those have never worked for anyone's benefit but their own are in a Hell of their own making. You can generally tell the former from the latter by attending their funerals, counting the mourners, and making an estimate of how many were truly saddened by the passing of the deceased.

If a person has lived a life of doing good works and being true to his values, he has been in Heaven. Greedheads and those who spend their lives promoting hate missed the boat - and now they're gone. There is no afterlife and they have blown their one opportunity to experience the bliss that is Heaven. Ebeneezer Scrooge finally caught on and managed to spend his last days happy.

Okay. What if I'm wrong. Suppose that I'm as full of it as the only porta-potty at a Fourth of July picnic. What then? Will our immortal souls fuel the fiery pits of hell because we strayed from dogma and spent all of that time doing good. I'm doubting it. Good works are their own reward, and if there is a Heaven in the afterlife, I believe that the good will be invited in, regardless of how many television preachers they failed to support during their days as mortals. And likewise, if there is a Hell, I'm betting that the gatekeeper will be far more concerned with how people lived their lives than if they tried to buy their way in by supporting "the one true church," or by erecting statues and buildings and schools to themselves and their enduring egos.

It's a win-win. Those who live right will experience Heaven in this life, and if there is a Heaven in the afterlife, they will experience that one as well. And their soul mates in that afterlife will be truly good spirits, the kind with whom they wouldn't mind sharing a big ole fluffy cloud.

"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens." --Woody Allen